When it comes to online marketing, nothing is more important than the call to action. This element tells your audience what you want them to do, and without it, you’re leaving money on the table. In this article, we’ll discuss the importance of the call to action, and we’ll provide tips for creating effective ones that will help you boost your sales.
What Is A Call To Action
A call to action tells users to take specific action in digital marketing campaigns. These messages are typically words, such as ‘sign up!’ or ‘buy now!’, and often take the form of a ‘button’ or ‘link’. In email marketing, social media marketing, affiliate marketing, and many forms of internet marketing. CTAs tend to link to a webpage where the user can take further action.
Why Is A Call To Action Important
The call to action, or CTAs, is a very important element on a webpage, acting as a signpost that lets the user know what to do next. Without having a clear CTA, people may not know the next steps to take to purchase a product or sign up for a newsletter. As such, the user may leave the webpage with no agenda accomplished.
A single call to action – i.e. an action from which only one action is expected – makes it clear to the user what you expect of him and helps remove friction in moving him down the path of action. If there are multiple actions he is supposed to take that complete the desired action, a call to action with multiple actions provides a variety of options to help weed out the less relevant.
If a site visitor lands on a blog post, it is important to have a clear call to action prompt, an attempt to persuade, at the bottom of a blog article or content. The prompt might encourage new interaction on a site. There are many variations of calls to action, but they fall into two main categories:
1. Calls to Action that Persuade:
In this type of call to action, you are trying to persuade the user to take a specific action. Examples include selling products, signing up for newsletters, signing up for an email list, or submitting a form.
2. Calls to Action that Lead:
This type of call to action is used to lead the user down a path that will eventually lead them to a conversion process. Examples include ‘next’, ‘get started’, ‘register’, etc…
Simple Examples Of Calls To Action
A “call to action” can be any request or instruction that you make of a person on the site, thus a CTA may take many forms depending on the context. A call to action can be a closing statement in a blog post, a line in an email, a CTA button on a website, or a request for people to join an e-course.
Here are some call-to-action examples you might typically see on a blog:
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For a B2B company, call-to-action buttons could feature text such as:
Get started
Sign up
Free Trial
Contact Sales
An effective call to action clearly communicates what the user can expect when they click on a button or take the next action, which can improve the click-through rate.
Whereas on an e-commerce site, the CTAs may be more commercially focused:
Add to cart
Checkout
Buy now
Add to wishlist
In each case, the CTAs on the page tells the user what action to take next to continue interacting with the site and moving further down the conversion funnel.
How To Create Compelling Calls To Action
Marketers employ a number of strategies for creating effective CTAs. Below is a list of some common ones:
1. Good Design: The best calls to action need to grab the user’s attention, so a bright button color that contrasts with the color of the page or an email is an effective strategy.
2. High Visibility: Because the call to action should be the most noticeable thing on the page, the font size should be large enough to command attention.
3. Clear Benefit: Stating a clear benefit that the user will get from completing the transaction is an effective way to get them to click.
4. Actionable Text: A call to action, as its name implies, is designed to compel the user to take action, so an effective CTA should use action words such as “discover”, “learn more”, and “buy now”.
5. Short in Length: A good call to action should be a short phrase, not a sentence. Most are no longer than five to seven words.
6. Sense of Urgency: Users are easily distracted on the internet, so a strong sense of urgency such as a limited-time offer can help compel users to take action immediately instead of putting off taking action.
Conclusion
Many business owners ignore the importance of the call to action to their business content marketing strategy because they don’t know what it is but it is the most important element of any web content marketing strategy. So, if you want to reach your business goals, you must have a good call to action.
If you are marketing through social media, then you are missing out on millions of potential customers if you are not getting into the habit of using this strategy. To learn more tips and strategies on how to grow your business and personal brand online, Subscribe to our mailing list or contact us for further assistance.
